Remarks At The Cato Institute
Policy Forum:
Do Movies And Music Cause Violence?
Sex, Cyberspace, And The First Amendmentby Marcia Pally
President, Feminists For Free Expression

December 8, 1994

I want to begin by giving an indication of
what is being censored today so we may have some idea of the range and scope of
possible on-line censorship of the Internet. By the end of the 1980s book banning
by public bodies had increased to three times the 1979 level, according to the
American Library Association. The most censored books at that time included The
Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, 1984, Slaughterhouse
Five, The Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and all the
works of Steven King and young- adult author Judy Blume. Also included were dictionaries--Webster's
Seventh, Random House, Doubleday, and American Heritage--that give the definitions
of dirty words.

The films banned by public bodies between 1980
and 1990 included A Passage to India, Victor Victoria, A Clockwork Orange, Zeffirelli's
Romeo and Juliet, and Splash. In 1992 the American Library Association reported
a 28 percent increase in book-banning efforts above the increases seen through
the 1980s. Also in 1992 People for the American Way reported a 50 percent increase
in censorship in the public schools, the greatest rise in book-banning efforts
in a decade. In 41 percent of the cases, efforts to restrict books were successful.

According to the American Library Association,
in 1991 the fastest growing group of censored books was on the occult; the second
fastest growing group was books on health and family life issues, particularly
works addressing AIDS education, sex education, and drug abuse. By 1993 the emphasis
had switched, with attacks against materials believed to be occult taking second
place to challenges against AIDS education, sex education, and discussions of
homosexuality.

It's worthwhile asking what the appeal of censorship
is before we get into legal issues. Why do people want to censor?

Censorship in the United States is offered
to the public as an elixir of safety, like the traveling salesman's tonics that
would "cure" whatever ailed you. Proponents of censorship suggest that their cure
will bring an improvement to life: rid yourself of pornography, or of The Catcher
in the Rye, and life will be safer, happier, and more secure. Get rid of bad pictures,
and you are rid of bad acts. This is the great soothing appeal of censorship--the
promise of a better life, if only some magazine or movie or text is banished.

Will life improve if we ban some image, rock
music, or movie? The mass-market pornography and rock n' roll industries took
off only after World War II. Before the 20th century few people, save a wealthy
elite, saw any pornography whatsoever. Certainly they heard no rap or rock n'
roll. Yet violence and sexism flourished for thousands of years before the printing
press and the camera. Today countries where no sexual imagery or Western music
is permitted--countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China--do not boast strong
records of social harmony or strong women's rights records. For millennia teenagers
have managed to become pregnant without the aid of sexual imagery, rock n' roll,
or matrimony. In Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, John D'Emilio
and Estelle Freedman note that up to one-third of births in colonial America occurred
out of wedlock or within eight months of obviously hurried marriages.

In light of the historical record of violence
and sexual abuse, it is unlikely that their cause lies in a Johnny-come- lately
industry such as mass-market pornography or rock n' roll or rap. Banning sexually
explicit material is not likely to reduce those abuses or assist women and children.
The social science data come to the same conclusion. There are a few points that
I'd like to go over.

First, the claim that sexual material is more
violent today than it was earlier is unfounded. Longitudinal studies show that
sexual material was decreasing in its violent content through the 1980s. Second,
the claim that sexual imagery causes aggression finds no support either in field
studies or in laboratory studies. That conclusion was reached by the surgeon general's
report and--surprising to many people--by the Meese commission. The publicity
around the Meese commission's report suggested that sexual imagery does cause
violence, but the overview of the science by Dr. Edna Einsiedel found that it
does not.

Third, the idea that kinky or "degrading" sexual
imagery promotes violence against women is also without support in the scientific
data. The only reliable conclusion the surgeon general's report reached was that
subjects exposed to "kinky" sexual imagery estimated the prevalence of varied
sexual practices more accurately than did control subjects.

Fourth, the research on sexually violent images
is the least conclusive. A good deal of material seems to suggest that if you
show males violent, nonsexual material, their aggression will increase in the
laboratory. Yet if you show people Jane Fonda workout tapes in the laboratory
and require that they follow the aerobic program, their aggressive responses will
increase following the movie. The common denominator is physical arousal. If you
increase heartbeat, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, and adrenaline level,
a subject's actions will be enhanced--not only aggression but also generosity
and kindness. That tells us little about how violence occurs outside the laboratory
and more about banning Jane Fonda.

By contrast, some researchers have investigated
how violence occurs in life. In her field studies, Dr. Susanne Ageton found that,
among adolescents, membership in a delinquent peer group accounted for three-quarters
of all sexual aggression. Other factors, including exposure to sexual material
and attitudes about women, accounted for 19 percent. Dr. Judith Becker, who served
on the Meese commission, found that crimes committed by adolescents, like those
committed by adults, are linked to sexual and physical abuse experienced in childhood
and to alcohol consumption, not to exposure to sexually explicit material.

Fifth, the claim that more sexual crimes occur
in geographical areas where sexual material is more available is also without
support. Studies in the early 1980s, notably by Drs. Larry Baron and Murray Strauss,
suggested that areas with higher consumptions of sexual material experienced higher
sexual crime rates. In their later studies they discovered a confounding factor--the
number of unmarried males between the ages of 18 and 30. When that variable is
factored in, all other correlations disappear. The only factor that predicts sexual
crime rates is the number of young unmarried men in an area.

Finally, I would like to say that the research
in Canada, Europe, and Asia confirms the U.S. research on the supposed causal
link between sexual material and crime rates. I recommend to you the Fraser committee
report from Canada, the 1990 report from Great Britain by Drs. Dennis Howett and
Guy Cumberbatch, and the extensive longitudinal studies in Denmark by Dr. Bert
Kuchinsky, who found that after the liberalization of obscenity laws, sex crimes
in Denmark decreased. Following the liberalization of obscenity laws and the increase
in available sexually explicit material in other European countries, sex crimes
decreased or remained the same. Note also that Japan has perhaps the most violent
pornography on the planet; it has almost nothing to do with sex and a great deal
to do with violence. Yet Japan reports one of the lowest sex crime rates in the
world. Reporting of sex crime rates in Japan decreased in the 1980s when one would
have expected, with the emergence of feminism in Japan, reporting of sex crimes
to have increased.

If sexual lyrics and images do not cause violence,
public attention should turn to what does. Violence is caused by long- standing
familial, economic, and political problems, and it is those that need addressing.
However popular it is today to blame two- dimensional media, basic values about
men and women, race, religion, sex, money, work, and the mores of violence are
learned early, at home.

Let's return to the question of why censorship
is so appealing. If the social science data don't support it, if there are so
many other substantive causes of violence, especially sexual violence, why does
censorship remain such a popular solution or apparent solution to life's problems?
First, it offers the boost of activism. Sexual imagery is visible, tinged with
the illicit, and far easier to expunge than deeply rooted injustices. Well-meaning
citizens believe they can fight pornography, beat it, and win. Effectiveness is
an important emotion, especially to Americans with their famous "can-do" mentality.
Feminists are exhausted by fighting a sexist economy and sexual violence, and
most Americans are at a loss in the face of a difficult economy and rapid changes
in gender roles, family, and race relations. Censorship is a boon to those who
want to feel they control their lives in complex times. In that respect, censorship
has the same appeal as the fantasies that it assails. It provides a frightening
but beatable monster--sexual material--and the pledge of a happy ending. As long
as life is insecure, that promise will have a market. Like monster movies and
pornography, blaming images is a fantasy that sells.

Censorship has another appeal, which pertains
particularly to today's topic of cyberspace. Blaming new-fangled technologies
for social ills is a common effort; it is part of feeling singular, important,
and special. Each generation is sure that it is unique and that the inventions
of its day have the power to alter life in ways no other gadgets have. The first
congressional hearing on television violence was convened in 1952, when fewer
than 25 percent of households in America had a television and when the violence
rates in this country were among the lowest in this century. So eager were people
to blame the new-fangled thing called television for something, that they blamed
it for a problem they didn't have. And before television was thought to be the
cause of violence, detective magazines and comic books were held, irrefutably,
to cause juvenile delinquency. Before the comics, the nickelodeon surely gave
the unwashed foreigners restive ideas. And before the nickelodeon, the novel surely
was overturning Western civilization, and before the novel, when the masses were
not literate, crown and church banned improper harmonics and bawdy ballads and
fig-leafed some of Western civilization's greatest art.

I would like to suggest that blaming images,
sexual or nonsexual, will neither prevent violence or rape, nor will it fell sexism.
Image blaming has no business being the basis of legislative or judicial remedies
for sexism or violence. Consider the case of Ted Bundy, who, in his effort to
avoid the death penalty, suggested that pornography made him murder and mutilate
dozens of women. During his trials, some other information about Mr. Bundy came
to light. For the first several years of his life, he and his mother and his mother's
sister lived with his grandfather, who had a bit of a temper. In addition to terrorizing
the family and torturing animals, he threw Bundy's aunt down a flight of steps,
breaking several of her bones. By the age of three, Bundy was sticking butcher
knives in his bed. Shortly thereafter, the effects of the grandfather's violence
became so aggravated and so obvious that the family insisted that Ted and his
mother move out of the house. But pornography made him do it?

Would that the cure for society's troubles
were just a matter of eliminating bad words and images, would that it were so
single issue or so easy. Censorship has always been more of a problem than a solution.
It purges society of books, movies, music, and now cyberspace information--especially
controversial information--while it leaves hate, racism, sexism, poverty, and
violence flourishing just as they did before the printing press and the movie
camera. Worst of all, censorship flatters us into thinking that we have done something
to improve life, while we ignore what might be done.